


Tremors

by TeaParade



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Cyborgs, Dystopian Future, M/M, Reunions, Sci-Fi, war and violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 15:26:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaParade/pseuds/TeaParade
Summary: They were told that Lance was dead. Lance was told that he would never have to fight in the war against the Z Wave again. None of them were told that there are far worse wars to be fighting.





	Tremors

The initial shock is nothing compared to the relief.

“You’re alive,” is the first thing he says. Then he sees the look in Lance’s new, “improved” eyes that GalTech gave him, after they found Lance barely alive in the wake of a warzone. A victim of the government’s experiments - a new test subject. Declared officially dead for thirty seconds, Lance had had his rights stripped from him the minute he was no longer considered alive. He was a product of government-funded testing. He was an object, not a person. 

Not anymore.

“They’re keeping track of everything,” Lance said evenly. His eyes looked real - Keith assumed they  _ were  _ real. But they’d undoubtedly been damaged in the heat of the Z-Wave firefight, recovered only through a multi-million dollar process where not just his eyes were fixed, but everything else, too. Fixed, or replaced.

“My body was  _ dead _ ,” Lance had explained once he and Keith had both stopped crying, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself. And, well, could Keith blame him? Neither one of them could believe it. The reunion between him - not to mention the others - and Keith had been overwhelming. “They’re seeing everything -  _ every _ thing, Keith,” Lance said, shaking his head. His voice had a snarl in it, heated and rightfully bitter. “Monitoring everything from the images my eyes see, to my heartbeat, to every person I come into contact with. They see it all.”

Keith understands.

“A normal life is out of the question.”

“You’re _alive_ , though.”

“My  _ brain  _ is alive,” Lance said with a swallow as his expression tightened. His face was smooth, smoother than it had been since the last time since Keith had seen him, which was… a year? 

Yeah, a year this month. One year since Lance had been recruited for a mission that Keith thought (up until a few hours ago) had killed him.

“No,  _ you  _ are alive, Lance.” He reached to grab for Lance’s wrist, also smoother than it should have been. The skin looked too new, too free of blemishes and freckles and traces of acne and all the other things that twenty-two-year-olds were supposed to have. 

Now, Lance had a new look that was just shy of eerie: smoothed out features, no freckles to speak of, thick eyelashes and a nose that was a little more perfect than was natural. He was the same height for sure, just a couple inches taller than Keith, still had that sharp chin, thin eyebrows and wiry build, but he was also more... still. Lance was normally restless - fidgety, tapping his fingers or shifting from foot to foot.

He stood like a statue, now. Or a robot, waiting for a command. 

Keith hated it. He wanted the old Lance back, and he'd be damned if he didn't admit that he'd happily pay whatever price it took to have that normalcy again.

He held back a grimace when his eyes roamed Lance’s face again and noticed a tiny brown spot near his right temple; he knew the marking. There was an implant there. Cases like Lance were so rare, but they happened - When they  _ did  _ happen, the government just couldn’t keep their fucking noses out of other people’s business. Lance might as well have been a drone, hollow and metal, fake and insentient and it fucking  _ killed  _ Keith to know that Lance couldn’t have even the barest semblance of privacy anymore. Everything he did, every time he so much as took a breath, would be recorded and logged for later analysis back in some lab somewhere. 

God, Keith thought he might vomit.

“They used the tissues that weren’t damaged from the z-waves and grew them in a lab,” Lance said, forcing the words out like he was choking on them. It was only then that Keith could feel the tremor running through Lance's hands, the faintest movement that leaked into Keith’s hands, too, then into the rest of his body and before he knew it, he was trembling. He was almost glad to see it in Lance, to see some sort of human trait in a body that was so new, a body that wasn’t trying terribly hard to look human. 

But this was Lance. 

Lance, who still wore his dumb bomber jacket with the baggy pockets, had the same twinkle in his eye, the same worn boots that he went everywhere with before the Recruitment. 

“Doctors did their best to explain how they saved my brain from dying,” Lance murmured, sounding far away. “Could’ve lost all my memories,” he sniffed and let Keith’s arms wrap tight around his waist. He let his head fall, burying it in Keith’s shoulder. “Glad I didn’t. Guess I still have something to be thankful for.”

“They’re still tracking you, though,” said Keith, only just beginning to feel the bitterness bubbling up in his stomach on Lance's behalf. It made him sick, it really did. Nothing was sacred anymore.

“They want to make sure this body is stable. That it stays stable.”

_ Body. It. _

As if that was all he was, now. Just an empty vessel to be micromanaged and followed around, watched and picked apart and studied like some sick experiment. Because that was all this was, right? It was all a sick experiment. It was repulsive. They couldn’t just treat patients and be done with it, they had to control everything that wasn't one hundred percent predictable.

“Besides,” Lance added, quieter, “it was either they put in the implant, or they make my family pay the bills for the operation.” He shook harder then, sinking into the embrace with a desperation that was so human and natural that Keith almost felt bad for feeling so relieved. “We can’t afford that shit, man.  _ No  _ one can. That’s how they get you.”

"Will they make you fight again?"

"They said no."

Keith didn't believe that. The government didn't just brush off the opportunity to weaponize this sort of thing. Either they'd fucked with Lance's body and hadn't told him, or Lance  _knew,_ and wasn't telling Keith.

Keith said nothing. 

All he did was hold Lance, wishing there was something he could do, anything. But this was not the old Lance; this was a man who had seen war and, as far as Keith had known, died in battle. Then he’d been brought back to life in a way that almost all those awful, dystopian sci-fi movies from decades ago had warned  _ not  _ to do, and now he was standing here in Keith’s office at Altea Ops headquarters as rain pounded against the wall-to-ceiling windows, crying into Keith’s shoulder as they both wondered where in the world they were supposed to go from here.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea floating around and needed to get it down


End file.
